Oliver Henry talking about the history of Shetland Wool

This is Oliver Henry telling me about the history of Shetland wool and talking me through two different types of fleece that have historically been found in the Isles. We were talking in a room towards the back of Jamieson & Smith, with a door open to the docks, so you can hear the gulls outside. He talks about a rougher Shetland wool sheep with "no home" i.e. no real use anywhere in anything. He also talks about "kindly wool" and the importance of soft wool in the economy of crofting. He mentions many of the sorts of garments traditionally made by women in Shetland, and emphasises the importance of the softer wool for their construction. He also describes how the lack of fences in Shetland meant that the two distinct fleeces previously discussed got genetically more and more merged as the sheep ran together and interbred, and then he talks about how the resultant fleeces are mixed, and filled with different finenesses of wool. He talks then about how important it is for these fleeces to be hand-sorted. This means that the fibres of all the individual fleeces - each one full of a rich, mixed, genetic heritage - must be separated into their different grades of coarseness. There is still no machine in existence which can sort wool like a trained pair of human hands. Oliver has been sorting wool for 46 years and his voice has been shaped by years of inhaling wool fibres; in many ways I think Oliver Henry embodies the very soul of Shetland wool; through sorting and grading thousands of fleeces from Shetland crofts, he lives and breathes wool, and it is through his hands that Shetland wool first passes in its journey from the farm to the factory. Beautiful.